Greater New Orleans

Bonnet Carre Spillway opening a mixed bag for anglers

OK, class, it’s Disaster Season once again on the delta, and here’s question No. 1 for metro-area anglers:

Q: Will the opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway hurt or help fishing?

A: Yes.

View full sizeBrett Duke, The Times-Picayune archiveTraffic makes its way along Interstate 10 as Mississippi River water pours out of the Bonnet Carre Spillway and into Lake Pontchartrain in Norco on Tuesday.

Really. Just listen to Dudley Vandenborre, inventor of Deadly Dudley lures and the guide who probably knows Lake Pontchartrain better than any critter without fins.

“In past openings, anytime we could fish that line where the fresh water meets the salt, we had great fishing, fantastic fishing,” Vandenborre said. “And anytime we found spots of clear water surrounded by the fresh, we had great fishing.

“But, eventually, anywhere the fresh settled in for two or more days, it was dead. And I mean dead.

“So, it can result in great fishing — or no fishing. You just have to stay in front of it.”

If you sensed Dudley was looking for the positives, you’re right. And that’s the only way recreational fishers can approach this event. When the choice is between homes and fishing, the winner is never in doubt, a fact of life on the delta we’ve learned to live with during past six openings since 1973.

But this event promises to offer something new because the Seabrook-Intracoastal-MR-GO channel that once funneled water from the lake into the wetlands is blocked.

So let’s take the “what happens next?” question from the top.

Lake Pontchartrain

Anglers need only remember this bottom line: Species that like brackish or salty water will move to stay out of the fresh river water, so relocation of fish is the biggest impact on fishing.

In the past, the wall of fresh water literally pushes fish right ahead of it. If the plume stayed on the south shore, the fish moved to the north and vice versa. And fishing for specks didn’t die immediately when the water moved into an area.

“Saltwater is heavier, so when the plume first gets to an area, the specks are still there, just on the bottom layer,” said Vandenborre. “But if it keeps moving into an area, then after about two or three days it’s fresh from top to bottom and the trout are gone.”

How widespread and how long that impact lasts depends on the size — how many of the 350 bays are opened — and length of the opening. Experts on the river say this opening probably will most closely resemble the 1973 event. And anglers and marina owners with hair as gray as mine say that means a pretty big hit for sports fishers in most of the Borgne-Pontchartrain basin.

“Looking at the volume on the river, it looks like it could be opened for weeks if not months — just like ’73,” said Louie Viavant, owner of Chef Harbor marina and bait livery, whose family was running the business when that event had all the bays open for 75 days.

“I mean, that would be the worst-case scenario for us. That would basically put the lake out of business for a while.”

He’s probably right. Vandenborre said scientists with the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation said the timetable for the lake to recover for an opening is typically three times the number of days the spillways is running.

“So, if it’s open for a month, then you figure it’ll take 90 days for the lake to get right again,” the guides said. “And that’s pretty much been my experience.”

Lake Borgne and south

This is where spillway history may be of little help.

In past openings, Seabrook was often responsible for sending spillway water across many favored fishing spots from Bayou Bienvenue through Shell Beach and on to Hopedale and beyond. That’s because the strong tidal action through the deep channel sucked vast volumes of river water into the Intracoastal Waterway, which fed into the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet. The impact was heightened if northerly winds pushed much of the spillway water closer to the southern shorelines of Lake Pontchartrain.

Seabrook also was helpful in reducing the impact of the spillway on Lake Pontchartrain because it was an important drain for that water body, helping speed recovery.

But that pathway is now blocked with hurricane surge protectors, first at Seabrook and then with the gigantic wall where the MR-GO meets the Intracoastal.

Those changes give not just hope to marina operators in St. Bernard Parish, but some cause for a possible fishing bonanza. That’s because as the spillway water pours from Lake Pontchartrain into Lake Borgne through Chef and Rigolets passes, the fish will find clearer, saltier water to the south and west.

“You could see the fish being pushed into this pocket, almost trapped here, and we could be up to our armpits in trout — as long as we get south and southeast winds that keep the water away from this side of (Lake Borgne),” said Frank Campo, at Campo’s Shell Beach Marina.

“I remember during one of these openings, the river water pushed all the fish to this shoreline, and the trout were so thick on that shelf at the mouth of Bayou Sue you could see them in the water.”

That optimism was shared by Glen Sanchez at Hopedale’s Breton Sound Marina, who thinks fishing in the St. Bernard marshes could be getting a second boost from river events to his west.

“The water pouring in from Bohemia and the delta out of Venice is going to push fish from that end of the marsh toward us, too,” Sanchez said. “We could have the only slice of good water in this area for specks.”

Maybe. Maybe not. This is new territory because of those floodwalls.

All of which brings us back to the one thing we know: Dudley Vandenborre’s rule.

“In all these openings, if you stay in front of that water, you’ll catch fish,” the guide said. “I know I’ll be moving constantly for the next weeks, maybe the whole summer.

“That’s what you have to do to catch trout when they have river like this.”